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I could feel the tension in her back as she tried not to cry, and while I held her closely and murmured, “It’s not your fault, Jean, baby, it’s not your fault,” all I could think was that my mother had been right—this was something we were both going through. The question now was how did we both get through it?

*

Although I got a clean bill of health at my follow-up appointment, it forcibly reminded me why I had to go in the first place and it left me jumpy and shaken. I was glad every time I hit the station and got to work; it kept me focused, busy, and so long as I wore a T-shirt, nothing rubbed against the constant itch that were the slowly healing lines under my navel.

“You and Jean must sure be enjoying the honeymoon,” my partner, Diaz, teased me with a bright grin as we reloaded the stretcher into the rig after a routine my-chest-hurts, I-just-smoked-crack call and my cell had gone off.

I grinned back at her as I answered. I felt no compulsion and hadn’t shared the events of the last weeks, at least not my personal situation, with either of my work partners, although we did discuss my cousin and my still-unnamed niece and nephew.

“Scotty,” I answered my cell.

“Hey, baby.”

“Hey yourself, what’s up? You get banged with overtime?”

“No. Just ran into Pat while I was on a call, and? My dad phoned. He called me Sinead and spoke in garlic. Dinner day after tomorrow at my parents’?”

I winced. Sinead was Jean in Gaelic, or “garlic” as Jean called it, and if her father was using it… We hadn’t visited them in a few weeks, and no matter what the reasons might have been, they were Jean’s family, and it wasn’t fair for her not to see them.

“Sure, no problem.”

“Great! Oh, and he asked if we’d bring Dusty and stay the night.”

“Sure,” I said again. I didn’t mind, not at all. I just felt a little guilty that we’d neglected Jean’s parents.

We had a great time. Mom Megs made her absolutely fabulous mashed potatoes, while Jean’s da insisted that a barbecue wasn’t working right if the flames didn’t jump out of the grill.

We ate in the yard, where Jean and Pat’s playful verbal sparring amused us all until the first threat of flung food.

“Don’t disrespect the mash!” Jean warned, eyeing Pat carefully as he loaded his fork a little too fully.

“You disrespected the piper on Saint Patrick’s Day! And I
know
where you were while I was playing!” he retorted, waving his cutlery with menace.

“Paidrig!”

Their da’s voice cut through the bickering like a clap of thunder, and we all looked at him.

“Patrick,” he said, and his voice lowered, “you…
killed
…the trees. The grass? Has not recovered, and my ears
still
hurt. Jean and Tori’s absence during your murder of tone and all things green has at least ensured that your mother and I will have grandchildren. Put the fork down…and after dinner, you get to seed the lawn, again.”

“You would have made a hell of a hostage negotiator, Da,” Pat muttered as he returned his attention to his plate.

Jean’s da reached behind for the cooler, then handed us each a beer. “Speaking of grandkids, how are Logan’s?” he asked, focusing on me and Jean.

We caught everyone up on the latest. Jean’s parents remembered Samantha as a girl, as Fire Captain Logan Cray’s daughter, and I learned that in a firefighter’s household, a 911 household, the memories of the fallen are honored forever.

*

When Jean and I curled up together that night upstairs in the Scanlon home, I had a hard time falling asleep. Jean held me carefully, her arm curled over my waist, but as I listened to her breathe over my shoulder, I wondered if it was the not completely healed mark on my skin or the fact that it was Trace who’d left it there after she’d…if that was the reason behind why Jean and I hadn’t really shared more than hugs and the occasional tender kiss.

I could understand why in those first two weeks, given the shock, the stitches, and the concern over Nina, as well as the surprise and fear for the twins, we had refrained, but I was fine now. I’d been fine for a few weeks.

I wondered if maybe something was wrong with me. I’d always enjoyed sex, and I loved making love with Jean. It was literally the best thing I could think of doing, since I loved her so much and we felt so good together.

Maybe I wasn’t supposed to want to yet? Or maybe Jean thought I wasn’t interested? What scared me more than anything was wondering if maybe Jean simply didn’t want to, didn’t want me.

The more I thought about it, the more this seemed like it had the makings of a huge misunderstanding one way or another. I knew Jean loved me; I just didn’t know if she still desired me. The only way to find out for certain was to ask.

Tomorrow, after we left here, we’d planned to stop by the hospital and visit Nina and the twins. Since the last update we’d learned they might be released in another week or so (Nina had been released after the first six days, but she and Sam practically lived at the hospital). Jean and I, in conjunction with my mother, my aunt, and Fran, who spent almost as much time at the hospital as my cousins did, had picked up everything Nina and Sam might need for the nursery, and it was amazing what “everything” meant for twins. After we visited the hospital, Jean and I planned to stop there in the afternoon and put it all together.

I’d discuss it with Jean then, I mused, because it would be just the two of us, and with our hands focused on the tasks before us, we’d have time to talk, time for me to ask the important questions.

If things were still okay between us, then fine, wonderful—perfect, even. And if we weren’t okay, if Jean felt differently about me, about us? I would improvise and adapt. I didn’t know if I could overcome, but I would definitely try. First, though, I needed an answer.

*

Once at the hospital, I was shocked, and Jean equally so, to find that neither twin had yet been named. They had reached what would have been thirty-four, almost thirty-five weeks gestational age, had slightly more than doubled in weight, were breathing on their own, and while they still needed a little help eating, they’d learned to swallow. They finally had eyelashes over their little new-baby blue eyes, and their skin had lost that frighteningly delicate translucency. They looked much more like tiny babies than the weak chicks that had been transported to the hospital more than a month before.

I found myself alone with Samantha in the hallway as the nurses and doctors did whatever it was they did behind the lowered curtain.

“Sam, can I ask you something?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Why haven’t you named them yet? Nina could, but she’s waiting for you. They’re healthy, they’re going home soon. They need names. Besides,” I said in as light a tone as I could muster, “I’m tired of describing them to my coworkers as simply my niece Baby A and my nephew Baby B.”

Samantha shook her head. “It’s too soon, nothing’s certain yet.”

I touched her arm gently. “Sam…” I started. How did I explain that some children lived and died nameless, unloved, unwanted, young and old? That no matter whose child or what age, live or die, everyone deserved to have an identity?

I thought of Mr. Wheeler and of the seemingly countless patients I’d had since then, of the bodies I’d worked on, fighting for life as it poured out, the hands I’d held of the dying who had no will to fight and no wish to be fought for, those who fought and lost anyway, and those who knew it was simply their time. How did I explain that I loved them, every single one of them, even though I’d never met them before, that those moments together bound me to them and them to me? They were strangers, complete strangers, yet each one became the entirety of the universe to me, my whole purpose for being, and I hoped, I so deeply hoped, that each one knew they hadn’t left this world for the void—or for whatever else might exist—unloved, unknown, in those last breaths.

How much more would I feel for these tiny, innocent beings, beings I shared blood with, had watched grow in Nina’s body and Samantha’s heart, had felt kick and shift under my hand? I knew, because it was so obvious, that Samantha loved them. The fact that she was so fiercely afraid of losing them screamed it, but that fear…they needed her more than she needed it.

“Samantha, they’re your babies, and they deserve to know that you love them. Name them so when you hold them, they know who they are, no matter what happens.”

She twisted her face away and jammed a hand into her pocket.

“There are no guarantees, Sam. I know you know that. They’re missing out on you, and you’re missing out on them, for however long you’re all here.”

The silence was so absolute I could hear the sound of the cloth moving as Samantha shifted a shoulder.

“You’re hurting your wife,” I added softly, because I had read the pain that flashed in Nina’s eyes when the subject came up, and I knew Nina: she’d forbear and forgive only for so long, and the damage it might do between them…Samantha had to realize that. “I know you don’t want or mean to do that.”

Samantha faced me then, her mouth set, a tight, thin line. “Really?” she said dryly. “You’re neglecting yours.”

Stunned by the harshness of her delivery as well as the words that plucked at the strings of my own self-doubt and played its exact tune, I merely stared.

I wasn’t sure what Sam meant, but I knew my own misgivings. Maybe, just maybe, Jean and I had spent too long being loving, but not sensual. And maybe…that change was obvious. If it was? Then I didn’t think it was something that we could recover.

Or maybe Sam meant that I was spending too much time concerned about her family and not enough with mine. Either way, it seemed like I had really fucked up again.

“Hey, there you are!” Jean said as she ambled up and clapped a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Hey, Sam.”

“Jean.”

The guarded friendliness in that touch did something to me, and I snapped to a new awareness.

“I’ve gotta go,” I said abruptly as I stepped out from Jean’s grasp. “Got some stuff to take care of. Jean, you can stay if you want. I’ll see you later.”

“Tor, what…?” Jean asked with that same friendly tone, a slightly puzzled look creasing her forehead.

It cut me to hear it, that tone that was so clear in my new ears, to see that expression with my eyes opened this way.

“Yeah, you know, stuff,” I told her. “Later, Sam. Tell Nina I said good-bye.” I strode to the elevator quickly, and I didn’t look back.

I took a subway down to the ferry that would take me back to the Island. From there, it was a short bus ride to the house. The first thing I did after letting Dusty out of the apartment to play in the yard was to go inside the house and upstairs. I scanned the room that had been mine, removed anything that was still there, then after another inspection to make sure I’d left nothing, I stripped the bed and put up the laundry.

I’d promised to put the baby furniture together, so I did that next—two cribs, one changing table, and two drawer sets—then went into their room and attached something called a “side along” to the bed frame, a three-sided crib that would allow Nina and Sam to keep the infants next to them at night. It was quick work; altogether it took perhaps an hour, maybe an hour and a half. I owed them that, at the very least.

Thanks to the vagaries of traffic versus public transportation I was done and able to take off in my car before Jean even hit the Island; I knew that because she’d called my cell a few times and left me messages that I played as I drove.

I thought I drove aimlessly, but instead I automatically headed to the beach, the same beach I always went to. Despite the early summer weather, school wasn’t out yet, so no one was around, at least not now, not before the sun set.

My phone rang two more times as I walked to my favorite spot, one call from Nina, the other from Samantha. I didn’t answer those calls, either.

What the fuck did anything matter, anyway? I wondered as I aimed my feet toward the pier. I hadn’t been there in months, the pier since I’d broken up with Kerry and the beach since I’d hooked up with Trace.

Trace. I’d really, truly, just wanted to help her out, and instead…I would have loved to be able to pretend that it was just sex gone bad or, better yet, that nothing had happened, because the word that I was supposed to use to describe the event, hell, the memories that I did have, made me want to puke. Jean didn’t want to touch me and, really, what the fuck did I care.

It wasn’t as if there wouldn’t come a day when I’d probably walk in and she’d either tell me we were done, or, better yet, I’d probably have the joy of discovering she’d been fucking someone else. I held no illusions; we were both very sexual people, and the field, hell, the world was crawling with people who would be more than happy and available for her if I wasn’t. Christ. The first time Jean had come on to me it was because I wasn’t wearing anyone’s ring—not a distinction too many would care about.

A variation on that reality had happened to my mother. It had already happened to me once; the only difference was that Kerry and I were still fucking even when she’d been cheating.

And…it was time I moved on. I’d very obviously overstayed with my cousins. Well, so much for that. It just fucking figured. Hell, it probably was my fault that Nina had suffered the abruption; one stupid fucking decision and I’d screwed up a lot of lives.